Blog of a course that allows students to learn how to use books, newspapers, magazines, journals, archives, databases, and the Internet to find and evaluate information on legendary creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptids. It also encourages the developement of critical thinking skills to deal with extraordinary claims and ideas for thinking about them.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Reality vs. Imagination

Here are my thoughts for this week: I am finding that in
relation to the thunderbird, most people see them as really big birds that
merely don’t exist, as one source I found stated, “It
certainly doesn't take much imagination to invent ‘something just like that
bird over there, only bigger.’” I see
this statement as both something true, but people do tend to underestimate
things. Just because something is easy to imagine, doesn’t mean it never really
existed.

This could be compared to
saying that in a few hundred years when people look back, and say the Golden
Eagle is extinct. Yes, they actually exist as seen now, but for this example’s
purpose, let’s just say that some people believe that they did not exist
because of the mere size of the bird and the fact that they were trained at
times to hunt wolves.

Yes – a bird having the
ability to take down a wolf may seem a little crazy, but it’s a fact. While
there is no physical proof that thunderbirds actually existed, to write the
animal off by a mere fact of seemingly unlikely features.

Times are also very
different from now and when Thunderbird sightings have been recorded to occur.
Whereas now if we see something odd or cool or out of the ordinary, we can take
out our cell phones and click! Proof. However in the past these kinds of
technology did not exist – how can we be sure that people did or did not see a
thunderbird when they said they did?